


Heel-Face Turn

by Bluebird_Rose



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftercare, Blood, Bondage, Branding, Cutting, Fear Play, Freezing, Hand Feeding, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, Knifeplay, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29321256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluebird_Rose/pseuds/Bluebird_Rose
Summary: Loki has one simple question for Thor. It would be best, for his sake, if he answers it.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	Heel-Face Turn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonReever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonReever/gifts).



> A holiday eggxchange gift for the lovely MoonReever!! I hope you enjoy ☆
> 
> Please read the tags, and let me know if there is anything that needs to be added.

“Mfff mf mfff!” Thor yelled through his gag, struggling against the impossibly strong bonds that held him at forehead, chest, belly, thigh, and ankle. He tried yet again to jostle the table, to free his hand, to rip the bonds that held him immoblie, but accomplished nothing. Another drip of sweat fell into his eye and he grunted in frustration, unable to wipe away the sting.

He had awoken in this dark chamber some time ago, finding himself fastened to a padded table made from some kind of material that somehow held strong even when faced with the might of a god. He had tried to call on the power of the storm to aid him, but thick leather bands inscribed with runes of binding circled his throat and wrists, cutting him off from his powers. His armor had been removed, but at least they had not removed the soft woolen underlayer that helped to provide some cushioning between flesh and metal. It covered him from collarbones to knee but left his arms bare.There was only a single light in the room, a bright overhead lamp that shone down directly in his eyes, blinding him to the details of the room. 

He gave a final frustrated wiggle against his bonds. How dare they treat a Prince of Asgard like this! When he freed himself he was going to lay waste to… whoever it was who had captur- temporarily inconvenienced him! He slowed his breathing, focusing on moving air in and out at an even pace. He could deal with this. He had been in much more dire straits before and emerged with only a few scars and grand stories to tell at the feast table, hadn’t he? He just needed to calm down and carefully examine the situation to find a way out.

Ok, what was the last thing he remembered? Last night (if it was indeed last night, he thought nervously, before pushing the thought away) he had left his Midgardian friends after their shared farewell dinner, going out to the balcony to call the Bifrost. Heimdall had heard his call, there was a bright light, a jolt, then nothing. Had their Midgardian enemies attacked him on the veranda and spirited him away? Or had something pulled him from the Bifrost during his split-second of travel? That should not be possible - it would take a being of unimaginable power to pull him from the path between worlds while it was in use...

Suddenly he heard the quiet click of tumblers as an unseen door was unlocked and opened behind him, then the gentle sounds of it being quietly closed and relocked. He held his breath and listened carefully, trying to glean any hints about his captor he could from the limited information available to him. He heard only the near-silent shuff of a footfall, steady calm breathing, and the creak of leather as his captor approached him and bent down next to his restrained head. Then a familiar scent washed over him.

“Hello brother,” Loki whispered calmly in his ear.

A rush of relief swept through Thor. Loki had found him! In the back of his mind he had known Loki would come to save him. Heimdall must have contacted him after Thor failed to show up in Asgard as expected, and of course Loki would have to find him first - he could not abide anyone else being the one to make his brother suffer. After a little well-deserved ribbing for allowing himself to be captured so easily Loki would release him and they would leave this dreadful place. His brother’s cool fingers worked at the latch to the gag in his mouth, taking the time to remove it gently without tugging at Thor’s hair. They soon found the trick of it and pulled the gag away, leaving only a bit of drool behind.

Loki straightened quickly, walking to Thor’s side where he could be seen. Thor couldn’t make out his face through the glare of the overhead light, but his brother’s slender form was unmistakable. “Loki, I’m glad you’re here. Let’s go,” he urged. Loki stood unmoving. Thor worked his jaw a bit, sore from the gag, then glared at Loki impatiently. He tugged at his restraints to urge Loki to hurry up. “What are you waiting for? Unbind me and let’s get out of here. Where are we, by the way?”

Loki only stared back at him. Thor felt a chill of disquiet brush against his heart. Was he bound by additional means that Thor, with his weak seidr skills, couldn’t sense? Why wasn’t Loki freeing him from his bonds? Surely they didn’t have much time before his captor returned!

“Sorry to inconvenience you by plucking you from the passages between worlds like a particularly ripe berry, but needs must,” Loki said cooly.

“Loki…” The word escaped his mouth like a question, uncomprehending. He tried harder to squint through the glare of the overhead light, to see the teasing grin that must surely be plastered to Loki’s face.

“It’s okay Thor, no need to worry,” he added soothingly. “I will return you to your little friends soon.”

“Loki!” Thor hissed, suddenly angry at being toyed with yet again by his snake of a brother. “What is the meaning-”

“Shhhhh,” Loki said gently, pressing a single finger to Thor’s lips, stopping him mid-word. “Just answer my question and you’ll be returned, right as rain.”

Loki paused a moment to see if Thor would object, but he was met only with a glare. He gave Thor’s lips a satisfied pat with the tip of his finger, then pulled back, features escaping into the halo of the light once more. “Where is it?” he asked quietly.

“Loki I don’t know what it is you’re talking about-” 

“Where is it?” Loki asked again, almost gently.

“I don’t know!” Thor bellowed. “Let me out of here!”

“Don’t lie to me,” Loki warned, precise in each word. “Where. Is. It.”

“Brother-”

Loki reached into his sleeve and pulled out a knife in one swift, clean motion.

A cold panic rushed into the vacuum of his chest. Thor tugged at his bonds a little more forcefully now, still struggling to keep a grip on the situation. “I don’t know what you want,” he said, his breath picking up, panic mixing with the rage. “Just let me up and we can find whatever it is, together.”

Loki said nothing, just gently placed the point of the knife against Thor’s throat in the notch between his collarbones, point balanced almost carelessly (as if Loki ever did anything truly careless in his life). Thor’s breath froze in his chest on the exhale, afraid that inhaling again would drive the knife into the vulnerable softness of his throat.

“Where is it, Thor?” Loki asked again, quiet as a snake laying hidden under fallen leaves.

Thor drew in a breath in to argue he did not know what Loki was searching for, that his brother was mistaken, that he had gone mad, that Thor would rip himself from the table and beat the sense into him he was so clearly missing - and the sharp point of the knife cut into the notch between his collar bones like butter. 

Thor froze again, but it was too late - Loki’s blade had already tasted his blood. He left it resting in the small wound, held in place only by the loose twin grips of Loki’s delicate hand and Thor’s soft meat. A small rivulet of blood started making its way down the side of Thor’s neck, a gentle trickle separated from the beads of sweat only by its color.

Loki suddenly flipped the knife over and pulled the edge under the collar of his undershirt, pulling the fabric taut. He was leaning close enough that Thor could see the light bouncing off the knife reflected in his mad, green eyes. He blinked a long satisfied feline blink and slipped the point of the knife down further, the fabric parting under the sharp blade with a whisper, hardly tugging at all as he traced a line down Thor’s body. 

Loki cut from neck to navel, tugging the sides out from under the bindings that still held him tight at chest and belly. He flipped the fabric to the side, baring Thor’s muscled torso to the chill of the air. He left behind only a few sluggishly-bleeding knicks when Thor wiggled in desperate rejection of the situation, and Thor found himself feeling almost pathetically grateful that it hadn’t been worse.

“Where is it, brother?” Loki asked, no hint of humor coloring his tone. 

“Loki, please-”

“Are you trying to stall for time? Do you think your little Midgardian “friends'' are going to come find you here? This is my own little dimension of otherspace. No one will ever find you here. No one else knows of this place. We have all the time we need.” Loki paused, chucking a bit. “Or at least, we have until my patience runs thin.”

Thor spit in his face.

Loki produced a soft handkerchief from his sleeve and slowly, patiently wiped the spittle from his cheek and brow, only the angle of his eyebrows conveying the depths of his displeasure. “I’m going to allow you that one, because you are under a lot of stress,” he said. “But-"

“How can I tell you where it is if I don’t even know what the hell it is?” Thor yelled, struggling harder now.

“Dearest brother, you are always so entertaining when you try to be clever. Do you think I don’t know what you’ve done?”

“Loki I really don’t-”

Loki laid the point of his knife back against Thor’s chest, cutting a shallow line a few inches long down his pectoral. Thor froze again, but it didn’t spare him this time. Loki laid down another line, then another, forming a red row of evenly spaced lines across Thor’s chest that grew deeper with each slice. The sharpness of the knife was such that Thor almost didn’t feel the cuts at first, but sweat soon caused them to burn like fire. He tried his best to hold still, fearing that Loki would drive the knife even deeper, would twist, would lay jagged marks that would never heal clean, but the effort of restraining himself drove him deeper into his suffering. Only a bellow forced its way out from between his gritted teeth as he struggled to keep himself in check - a bellow of rage, of frustration, of helplessness, of incomprehension.

The blood formed a solid warm sheet that flowed over his chest and down his neck, tickling as it dripped. The hot copper smell of his own blood filled the air, making him feel like he was choking on it - or had Loki gone too deep, cut something vital? He glanced fearfully down at the marks that marred his chest, expecting to find it a ragged mess, but they were still just neat lines marred by splashes and smears of red.

Loki had laid down a careful row of a few dozen lines across Thor’s trembling chest before he paused, pulling out his handkerchief again to wipe the blade clean. “You make a lovely canvas, Thor. So obliging, holding still for me” he praised, and Thor felt himself flush at the praise despite himself. “But I’m afraid these next ones won’t be as easy to endure.” Loki held his now clean knife up to Thor’s face, showing him how a layer of razor-sharp ice grew over the blade.

“Where is it, brother?” he asked quietly.

A bolt of true fear shot through Thor’s heart. His brother had been driven mad, and snapped, and would cut him to ribbons for an imagined theft, and Thor would not even know why. He redoubled his efforts to escape his bonds, roaring and screaming and tugging with all his strength. The blood from his chest made the strap holding his upper torso a little slicker, a little easier to slide against, but one quick gesture from Loki tightened it back down so much he almost couldn’t breathe. 

“I don’t know what you want!!” Thor bellowed, truly panicked now. It was not the physical pain - he could endure this and more without even flinching, and had before. That his own brother would do this to him, after they had been finally getting along so well, rekindling their relationship into something more, not understanding what Loki wanted. Didn’t Loki know Thor would give him anything, if only he could understand what he wanted?

Loki laid the ice blade against Thor’s chest, slicing across the cuts already there in a crosshatch pattern. The blade burned like ice, because it was - it instantly froze the blood, stemming the bleeding from the previous cuts, but also sending frozen shards of ice stabbing deep into the meat of his chest. 

Each breath was agony now, the frozen shards grinding against each other and wounding anew with each movement. 

“Why are you so shocked, Thor? Did you believe I had forgotten our differences? That I was safe? You should have known better than to trust me. What did you tell all your little Midgardian friends? That I was unduly influenced when I attacked their little backwater planet? Well look what your trust has given you - only pain. I knew you were foolish brother. I didn’t know you were stupid. Oh, are you crying?”

Thor was indeed crying, his pain escaping the only way it could, through fat tears that rolled down his cheeks and blended with the sweat and blood. He could only cry and hold as still as possible, pain from the ice blade sinking down and blending with the pain in his heart.

Loki again took his now bloodstained handkerchief out and gently wiped away Thor's tears. "Shhh. It's okay brother. All you have to do is tell me where it is, and I'll be gentle."

Thor broke down into despairing sobs as Loki moved around the table to the other side of his chest.

He held the knife up in front of Thor's face, and it glowed red hot, the flakes of ice melting in an instant and dripping down onto Thor's face and neck. "It took a while to master this particular weaving, but only the best for my brother," Loki informed him. Thor could feel the heat radiating from the knife even from this far away. Sweat beaded anew on his forehead.

Then Loki laid the tip of the glowing hot knife against Thor's chest.

This time the knife didn't so much cut as sear, throwing up smoke and the stomach-churning scent of cooked meat. Loki left delicate burns in an intricate looping pattern on the canvas of his flesh as Thor babbled and begged, swearing he would give Loki anything, pleading for his brother to just stop, just tell Thor what he wanted, just let him go and this could be forgotten. Loki just stayed bent over his task, unheeding, laser focused on his target.. Desperate, Thor began listing off all the places he could think of, both known and secret - the treasure room of Asgard, his favorite hunting cabin on Vanaheim, the closet of Jane's apartment on Midgard where he hid his favorite snacks, Muspelheim where he kept a favored sword or two, Jotunheim, Helheim… but nothing stayed Loki's careful hand.

At long last he stood up, brushing a lock of hair delicately back behind his ear. "What do you think, brother?" he asked, conjuring a looking glass to show off his handiwork.

Burnt in beautiful script, the edges of some parts blackened where he had taken extra care, Loki's name was etched over his heart.

"Now at least if I let them find your body after, they will know who brought you so low," Loki said, with the pride of an artist at their gallery showing.

Thor broke. He fell into soft sobs, helpless and bereft, closing his eyes to spare him the sight of his brother, his captor, his torturer.

Thor heard a creak of leather as Loki moved and his eyes shot open in fear, but Loki only reached up with one delicate hand to switch off the overhead light. The sudden darkness was a blessing, but Thor was in no mind to appreciate it. He had been pushed too far - trembling with adrenaline that had flooded him with the energy to flee, if not the means, breaths catching in his dry throat, pain searing across both sides of his chest, fire and ice.

Suddenly the door to his torture chamber was kicked in, light streaking in from the hallway. Thor jolted in his bindings but could not shift an inch. Loki leapt back from the table into the corner of the room, defensively throwing up a shield of red magic.

"Unhand my brother, you second-rate trickster," came Loki's voice from behind him. "I'll have your head for the insult you've paid me and mine today."

"Lo… Loki?" Thor stammered, confused. 

"Shhh," Loki said, bending down to whisper in his ear just as his torturer had a lifetime ago. "Hold on brother. I'll just take care of this pretender and I'll get you out of here, hmm?" He pressed a quick kiss to Thor's sweaty cheek, then stood.

"How DARE you?!" shrieked the other Loki. "I am Loki of Asgard! Unhand him and leave this place, before I am forced to-"

"What are you going to do, you little imposter? " Loki asked calmly, stepping towards the man cowering in the corner. "Did you think you could injure my brother and escape whole and hale?"

He flung a careless hand out towards the man in the corner, his attack shattering the red shield in an instant and decapitating him where he stood. The impostor’s mouth moved for a few seconds in leftover outrage before his head slipped from his body, rolling across the floor to stop at Loki's feet.

"What a horrible creature. Not half as beautiful as me too, even wearing my face," said Loki. Another gesture freed Thor from the bonds binding him to the table, but he could only lie there trembling, his powers still bound by the cuffs and collar.

“Let’s get you out of here, dearest,” Loki said softly. He leaned over Thor on the table, but instead of removing the bindings that held his power at bay he slid his arms under Thor’s knees and back, lifting him easily from the table.

Thor curled up, his face against Loki’s neck, breathing in the familiar calming scent of his brother. He trembled lightly with residual pain and fear but Loki only held him tighter, soothing him. Loki stepped lightly past the table to the door of the room. He breathed out gently in the direction of the door handle and it swung open for them. They stepped out into a featureles hallway, finally leaving the torture chamber behind. 

“Close your eyes, Thor,” Loki said gently, and Thor obeyed. He felt rather than saw the hallway dissolve around him. Loki placed him onto something soft and comforting that surrounded him in the scent of home. He opened his eyes and saw he was on their bed, in their bedroom - Loki’s plants and books everywhere, Thor’s dirty clothes still lying on the floor where he left them earlier. They were home.

“Let’s get you fixed up, shall we?” asked Loki. He reached out a hand to start healing Thor’s wounds, but Thor gave a sharp gasp of dismay, and he paused.

“Can we… can we just sit together for a moment first?” Thor asked in a hollow voice.

“Of course brother, of course,” Loki said, quickly arranging himself behind Thor in their bed. Thor leaned into his chest, seeking comfort. Loki wrapped one arm across his broad back, pulling him closer, and ran his hand through Thor’s sweaty hair. He conjured a blanket to lay over them both, tucking the edges carefully around them. “Shh, it’s okay now,” said Loki petting him gently. Thor let himself drift, held in his brother’s arms.

Thor floated there for a time, lost in the sensation of being safe and warm and held. Slowly the adrenaline bled away, leaving him tired and weak. He felt Loki shift slightly, and then a faint prickle of seidr. He heard the gentle clink of tableware, then something cool and wet was pressed to his lips. He opened his mouth trustingly, accepting the treat. A piece of melon. He chewed and swallowed it gratefully, focusing on the sweet flavor and licking the juice from his brother’s slim fingers. Another was soon pressed to his mouth, then another after that.

After more melon and a few grapes he had come back to himself enough that the pain in his chest was becoming an issue. He gave a soft grunt when Loki jostled him leaning over to fetch another piece of fruit, and Loki paused, pulling back to examine Thor. 

Shall we get you healed up?” he asked, gently. Thor gave a nod. Loki laid a hand over his brother’s chest, healing the deep damage from the ice first. The pain left his flesh and the cuts healed over before his eyes, leaving behind smooth healthy skin. 

As Loki’s hand passed to the brand, Thor stopped him. “Can I keep it, brother? Your name on my heart?”

“You’re really not in the proper state of mind to be making such decisions right now, Thor…”

“Even just for a little while, please…” Thor whispered, suddenly wanting this more than anything in the world.

Loki gave a little nod of acceptance and passed his hand over the brand, healing it into a smooth scar.

They drifted there for a few more minutes, taking comfort from each other’s skin.

After a time, Loki gave a thoughtful hum. “Was everything how you wanted it, Thor? We didn’t go too far?”

Thor nuzzled deeper into Loki’s chest with a sigh. “The decapitation was a bit much. It was upsetting to see even one of your doubles die in front of me.”

Loki gave him a kiss on the forehead. “I’m sorry it upset you. I got carried away with the drama.”

“It’s okay,” said Thor. “I know you love your Dramatic Moments. Other than that, it was fine.”

“‘Fine’, he says,” Loki scoffed. “A wealth of information.”

“It _was _fine…” Thor said. “I’m not afraid of you, Loki. I know you are not my enemy. I just...sometimes it helps to be reminded.”__

__Loki said nothing to that, just pulled him closer._ _

__“Whatever you need, Thor. I’ll be here,” he said softly, almost whispering into the crown of Thor’s hair. “I love you.”_ _

__“And I you, Loki.”_ _


End file.
